Loss of a good teacher hurts MPS

It's somewhat ironic that Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Gregory Thornton decided to leave his position soon after longtime MPS teacher Diane Hardy also announced her decision to resign after 19 years.

Thornton is leaving Milwaukee to take over leadership of the Baltimore public school system. Hardy, a dedicated Spanish teacher at Rufus King High School and unofficial "team mom" for the basketball team, decided she had enough of the institutional and political barriers facing most public school teachers in Milwaukee. (She is a former Journal Sentinel community columnist.)

After often working seven days a week in a job in which she became intimately involved in the lives of her students, she's giving up her career without a concrete plan for the future; she simply knows she's had enough.

To explain her decision to fellow teachers, parents and students who have been an integral part of her career, she posted an open letter on Facebook:

"This past Thursday, I turned in my official resignation from the Milwaukee Public Schools. It is effective at the end of this semester. Since Tuesday is Senior Night for the basketball team, my emotions will be hard to check since it's my last home game, too.

"As you can imagine, this was a tough decision. This is complicated to explain, especially to those outside of education. This decision ultimately boils down to three reasons.

"My personal wellness is too important. I have sacrificed a lot of my health and personal life for my job. It is simply not sustainable. I am choosing to live a healthier, more balanced life."

Hardy, a Wisconsin native who served in the Peace Corps before joining MPS, told me in an interview that a variety of factors led to her decision to resign and pursue an uncertain future.

Basically, she said that an "anti-teacher sentiment" in Wisconsin had beaten her down and the political environment that demonized and undervalued teachers was part of the equation. She said, contrary to some who think teachers value money over education, she was willing to take a 50% pay cut in her next job and feels too much bureaucracy has "devastated my classroom."

For Hardy, the after-effects of Gov. Scott Walker's Act 10 legislation has created an untenable situation for many public school teachers dealing with larger class sizes, more bureaucracy and an increased focus on testing without any obvious purpose.

She made sure to praise administrators at Rufus King — acknowledged as one of the best city schools — but regrets the role politics have played in determining her curriculum.

After news broke last week that Thornton was leaving for a new job in Baltimore, Hardy admitted that it wasn't that big a shock to her. "He's had one foot out of the door since he's been here," she noted, adding that it's an opinion many fellow teachers shared.

Hardy, a white woman who has mentored dozens of minority students at Rufus King, portrayed her career teaching in Milwaukee as a mixture of passion, affection for students and frustrations about institutional restraints that prevented her from doing her job. She cited things such as a "one size fits all" teaching model, interruptions in class lessons for required testing, even the intrusion of things such as weapons searches for students done without input from teachers.

Her resignation letter spoke to her basic dilemma:

"Teaching used to be about my students' learning. It no longer is. I spend so much time on things that don't matter and less time every day on what does: the kids. 'Professional' development, the obsession with testing, evaluations, the top-down, one-size-fits-all approach actually takes teachers away from their kids.

"While Rufus King is still a great place to be, I am not optimistic about MPS' bureaucracy, which is so extremely out of touch and imposes so much from above. Our city kids and their amazing families deserve better."

Over the past few years, I've talked to many MPS teachers who also have left their jobs, either by personal decision or layoffs due to Act 10, and who express many of the same frustrations as Hardy. She may work at one of the best MPS schools by academic achievement, but she still feels undervalued and underappreciated by an educational system that seems to be more tied to political results than to what's best for kids.

With Thornton gone after just short of four years, Hardy knows MPS has to start on yet another road to success, but it will be without her. "I've had kids stop me in the hallway and ask why I'm leaving, but it's just time to go."

As MPS embarks on yet another search for a new leader, we shouldn't forget it's just as much a loss when a good teacher decides to hang it up.